Top Young Entrepreneurs
Hello Everyone
As some of you who have been following me for a while know, I have done several “Top Young Entrepreneur Lists” including the highly successful Young Entrepreneurs Rich List over at RetireAt21.com
Today I have compiled a list of the Top Young Entrepreneurs Making Money Online – aged under 25 – these are really impressive individuals, both as business people and as human beings. Of course you will already know some of these names (Matt Mullenweg and Mark Zuckerberg for example) but there should be some that are NEW to you as well.
All of these young entrepreneurs are having a tremendous impact on the world – and we all have so much to learn from them.
Talking of impact, I am very pleased to announce that Yanik Silver is adding a “Young Mogul Day” to his now famous annual “Underground Online Seminar“. What is more I will be working closely with Yanik to make this one of the best young entrepreneur events ever – with some of the world’s most incredible top young entrepreneurs already booked to speak. (Any of you young entrepreneurs who got attended Yaniks last UNDERGROUND back in February already know what a Top Notch event this is) Expect to hear more news about this soon.
Finally — watch out for a BIG UPDATE at RetireAt21.com in the near future – we are currently doing a huge redesign with some amazing new content, including profiles of some of the world’s best up and coming young entrepreneurs.
Enjoy the list – let me know what you think — and is there a Young Entrepreneur that you know / admire who I have missed of this list?
To Our Success
Michael
#1. Mark Zuckerberg (25 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.facebook.com Why They Matter: Mark is at the top of our list for two HUGE reasons, he is the world’s youngest billionaire and he runs the world’s largest social networking website which is actually the second most visited site in the whole world, not bad for 25 years, is it? |
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#2. Matt Mullenweg (25 Years Old) |
Website: http://wordpress.com Why They Matter: Matthew Mullenweg is the founder of Wordpress, the software that runs this blog and millions of others out there. Without Matthew, you probably wouldn’t be at this website right now because I wouldn’t as fond with blogging without his genius, easy to use blogging software. He has been offered over $250,000,000 for his company which he turned down. |
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#3. Pete Cashmore (24 Years Old) |
Website: http://mashable.com Why They Matter: Pete Cashmore makes our list because he runs on of the world’s top blogs which is about all that is new on the web. With over 1,600,000 Twitter followers and 300,000 RSS readers, you know this guy is running something big! |
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#4 & 5. Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith (23 & 22 Years Old) |
Website: http://box.net Why They Matter: Box.net founded in 2005 was originally launched as a college project to share and store any type of file, and make it accessible from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. The company nearly has 2 million users on the service, and netted a $6 million in venture capital. |
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#6. David Karp (22 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.tumblr.com Why They Matter: Tumblr is a blogging platform that anyone can use. The service was built with customization and ease of use in mind. Karp invested money into the company from his previous job as a software consultant at a parenting website. Tumblr raised $5.25 million in funding from various investors, including 2 lead investors with the popular social network Twitter. |
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#7 & 8. Catherine & David Cook (19 & 21 Years Old) |
Website: http://myyearbook.com Why They Matter: Catherine and her brother, David started MyYearBook back in 2005 and have grown it to become America’s third largest social network and since raising $17.1 million in two rounds of investment has become profitable! |
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#9. Sean Belnick (23 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.bizchair.com Why They Matter: Sean is a real entrepreneur, at 14 years old, he locked himself in his bedroom and 3 days later, his business was born! Now he is earning over $50,000,000 a year selling business chairs online. Sean has been an inspiration to young people around the world trying to sell online! |
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#10. Matt Mickiewicz (25 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.sitepoint.com http://www.99designs.com and http://www.flippa.com Why They Matter: Matt is an inspiration to thousands of webmasters around the world, whether it’s their first website or their 20th most people would have visited Sitepoint to learn how to improve their website. Sitepoint has evolved from the website to learn about web design to anything from selling your website for a million dollars, buying books on coding the perfect contact page, to hiring someone to create your twitter background. |
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#11. Noah Everett (24 Years Old) |
Website: http://twitpic.com Why They Matter: Noah is the founder of the popular image upload website, TwitPic. His website has grown with the growth of the social media website Twitter and is now one of the top 200 websites in the world according to Alexa. Surprisingly Noah works from home, which is also where he powers his servers that have to deal with millions of pages a day! |
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#12.
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Website: http://www.icontact.com Why They Matter: Ryan who is just 25 years old runs iContact.com and email marketing service that expects to turn over $25,000,000 this year. With over 55,000 customers paying a monthly FREE, Ryan has build a membership program where he has been able to offer an unbelievable service and at the same time build a continuity program that should never end. |
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#13. Jon Wheatley (22 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.dailybooth.com Why They Matter: Jon runs a great social networking website called DailyBooth which basically lets you snap a picture every day and it puts it all together in a little video. The site has really evolved since launching earlier in the year has got over $1million in funding from big names such as Digg co-founder Kevin Rose and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake. |
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#14. Neil Patel (24 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.quicksprout.com & http://www.crazyegg.com Why They Matter: Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. The thing that really makes Neil stand out as a top young entrepreneur is how he got a lot of the top blogs in the world to permanently link to his site. |
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#15. Kieran O’Neill (22 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.psu.com and http://www.playfire.com Why They Matter: Kieran is 22 years old and is a serial internet entrepreneur with three huge successes online so far! Kieran sold his first website online for $1.25 Million at the age of 19 and now has launched a new gaming social network which he raised over $1 Million in venture capital investment for as well as still running one of the world’s largest PlayStation fan sites. |
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#16.
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Website: http://www.mozilla.com Why They Matter: Blake is an American software developer, who is probably best known for starting the Mozilla Firefox project. Firefox was released in 2004, when Ross was 19 years old. Firefox got over 100 Million downloads within its first year of being on the market! |
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#17 & 18. Eric & Susan Gregg Koger (24 & 25 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.modcloth.com Why They Matter: ModCloth started as a small clothing business that Eric and Susan started when they left high school. They continued the business at university, shipping clothing items from their dorm room. When they graduated from uni in 2006, they decided to pursue the business, and since then it has grown into a huge success. |
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#19. Anthony Volodkin (23 Years Old) |
Website: http://hypem.com Why They Matter: The Hype Machine keeps track of music discussion on blogs around the world. It lets people discover, listen and buy music that bloggers are writing about. |
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#20. Ashley Qualls (20 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.whateverlife.com Why They Matter: Ashley Qualls who is already a multi-millionaire, and has taken the young entrepreneurs world by storm. Aged just 14, Ashley created WhatEverLife.com, a Myspace layouts site aimed at the female demographic, the site at its peak received over 250,000 visitors every single day, which is more than teen magazines such as Teen Vogue, Seventeen & Cosmogirl… combined. Ashley doesn’t charge users to use the site, instead, she strategically places ads on the site, and around 60% of her monthly income comes from Google Adsense. |
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#21. Juliette Brindak (20 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.missoandfriends.com Why They Matter: Juliette first came up with the idea of Miss O and Friends ten years ago when she was 10 years old. Her business is now worth over $19 Million, and is visited by millions of girls every month. In 2006, Juliette released a book, and since then has sold over 120,000 copies of it! |
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#22 & 23. Sam Tarantino & Josh Greenberg (Both 23 Years Old) |
Website: http://listen.grooveshark.com Why They Matter: GrooveShark was launched in private beta in early 2007, and is now a huge online music search engine and streaming service. GrooveShark employs 40 people (as of december 2007) and is part of the Escape Media Group which was formed in march 2006. |
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#24, 25 & 26. Elliott Breece, Joshua Boltuch & Elias Roman (All 25 Years Old) |
Website: http://amiestreet.com Why They Matter: Amie Street is a music website, where the community decided the price of the music. Every song on the website starts at a very low price, sometimes free, and then increases up to prices of 98 cents depending on how many people purchase it. |
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#27. Richard Ludlow (22 Years Old) |
Website: http://academicearth.org Why They Matter: Richard is the founder and CEO of Academic Earth, a website that provides full video courses from leading universities. Academic Earth was included in Time Magazines top 50 websites of 2009 list, along with companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. |
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#28. Kristopher Tate (21 Years Old) |
Website: http://www.zooomr.com Why They Matter: Kristopher is the co-founder of photo sharing website, Zooomr. The popular website service was created in 2005, and since then has grown and had many new features implemented into it. |
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#29. Edmund Loh (23 Years Old) |
Website: http://edmundloh.com Why They Matter: Edmund started his internet business back in March 2005. He achieved success after selling other peoples ebooks online (with resale rights), and then went on to write his very own ebook, titled Edmund Loh’s Guide To Private Resale Rights. Since then, Edmund has written over 212 PLR titles. |
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#30. Shama Kabani (24 Years Old) |
Website: http://clicktoclient.com Why They Matter: Shama is an online marketing master. She is the president of Click To Client, a full service web marketing firm. Shama travels the world speaking at many conferences about internet marketing. |
Ryan Allis (25 Years Old)
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Marshall Haas
06. Nov, 2009
Ahhh I love lists like this. My new favorite person to study is Matt Mullenweg. It’s pretty interesting how he makes money with Wordpress.
Excellent list Michael!
Tammy
06. Nov, 2009
Wow! This is QUITE list. And i want to thank you for making me feel old at 28. LOL
srivathsan.GK
06. Nov, 2009
Woww .. Amazing .. many are my role models
Tom - StandOutBlogger.com
06. Nov, 2009
I had been reading about WhatEverLife.com a while ago, but there website just throws up an error.
Jeff
06. Nov, 2009
Hi Michael,
Pretty impressive list. Glad you could sneak your picture into it. So where would you stand in thsi line up?
Michael
06. Nov, 2009
Ha.. you know I wouldn’t include myself in a list Jeff although I could possibly see myself at the lower end.
Glad you liked the list,
Michael
julien
06. Nov, 2009
Too late i’m 26 years old…
Name (required)
06. Nov, 2009
Again awesome list Michael.
Just by reading the headline motivates me
minal
06. Nov, 2009
What an achievements! Very very inspirational.
Rafi
06. Nov, 2009
Love the list! so much to get inspiration from. Thanks for sharing.
Cynthia
06. Nov, 2009
Another Great List! Glad to see a few newbies I have never heard of before! Keep em coming-your list are so inspiring!
Tom Howat
06. Nov, 2009
Hi Michael,
Pretty impressive list. Maybe I make next time on earth as kinda missed this first time around
Tom 52 and 3 days old.
Mike J
06. Nov, 2009
Great list of highly successful young entrepreneurs. I too hope to some day make a list like this although I am getting older and older maybe I will be on the older guys who finally made it list. You always have the best list posts, thanks.
Beau
06. Nov, 2009
Some real people making some real cash. This is a great list!
Tomas
06. Nov, 2009
Amazing list Michael, I hope that it will inspire me to learn and do more things everyday. Thanks.
S Ahsan
06. Nov, 2009
Good post Mike, you amaze me sometimes! discovered you few days ago! will hit up soon, i have so much in mind
!
Find A Hot Niche
06. Nov, 2009
Thanks for this list, Michael! It’s very inspirational to see the diff. ways young people (or anyone) are making money online. I’ve got some new ideas of my own now and will do more research on some of these folks. It’s truly amazing how one little idea can turn into hundreds of millions of dollars!
David Walker
06. Nov, 2009
Hi Michael,
This is a great list. I had no idea that some of the websites, services etc here were created by kids still in their teens – mind blowing!
Perhaps I’ll make one of your “oldies” lists in a year or two
David
P Cutler
06. Nov, 2009
Hi Michael – to an oldy like me still struggling with the basics (but started out by following your “How to make money blogging”) this list is truly amazing. I’m still plodding at my slow pace but there are some excellent role models in your list to keep me trying.
Well done – fascinating stuff.
Nick Tart | JuniorBIz
06. Nov, 2009
Another great list, Michael! If you have it in you, I’d like to see another list like this: Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs Under 20… Might be more difficult to research.
King Sidharth
06. Nov, 2009
INSPIRING!!!!
You forgot me! lol… King Sidharth (18 yo)
http://thefriendz.biz
Serial Entrepreneur… founded companies like: The Royal Raspberry, the FRiEnDz, Meditation Rocks and many coming up. LOL
Just kidin. I am not making millions yet.
James
06. Nov, 2009
This list surprised as it related to some of the companies that were created by these youngsters. This is great inspirational material.
Nikunj Tamboli
06. Nov, 2009
I only have one year left to get into these list after that i would get too old to be here
Website protection
06. Nov, 2009
Man am surprised to see who is running some of those websites.Non in bad sense but good i know many of those websites and use them but never thought that the owners are younger than me
am to late to get in this list lol
but maybe sometimes in the future i will get on some list like this for older people ehhe especially now i got motivated to work even more
Sammie
06. Nov, 2009
AWESOME LIST MIKE. GOOD JOB
CAN I STILL MAKE IT?
Camilo Olea
06. Nov, 2009
GREAT article. LOVE to see other fellow young human beings being smart & successful.
Stay tuned for me… http://www.cancunissafe.com is coming, and it will be THE reference for real-time, social cancun information, community, reviews, etc…
Hope to be listed in next year’s list!
Cheers from Cancun,
Camilo
5x5
06. Nov, 2009
Quite an eye-opener on what can be achieved if you put your mind to it. I never realized some of my favorite sites were created by folks half my age. All of you “kids” should be proud!
Teen Blogger
06. Nov, 2009
Great Post.
This is a fantastic post and really inspires everyone. I only knew about ashley, but the most of the sites on the list are new to me.
Steve C
06. Nov, 2009
Incredible series of stories. Inspiring to see them all together in one post. Hope to follow suit!
Sagar
06. Nov, 2009
A very good compile..
For me the most inspiring were Neil Patel, Mark Zuckerberg and Matt Mullenweg.
Samuel Sim
06. Nov, 2009
I would have recommended Gurbaksh Chahal in the list, if he was any younger than 27 years old this year…
His story is just so inspiring… A no-miss for anyone who likes dreaming big..
Sasha Gilberg
06. Nov, 2009
awesome list Michael
reading stuff like that is very inspiring to me and helps gets the creative juices flowing for my business
ATCHUTARAO
07. Nov, 2009
Cool Very good great encouragement need passion not age or experience
Stephen Luc
07. Nov, 2009
Very awesome.
Congrats Edmund Loh!
Travis
07. Nov, 2009
once again you put together an awesome list of young entrepreneurs. Very motivating. Keep it up your work is very much appreciated.
Vivek
07. Nov, 2009
The list is exhaustive. Nice to see three Indians on the list!
Vivek
07. Nov, 2009
The list is exhaustive. Nice to see three Indians on the list!
BTW I love your blog!
Jacques van Heerden
07. Nov, 2009
Hey buddy, Really great list you going here, you have been doing a great job. I see myself somewhere on this list in the next year or two. Launching a few projects beginning of next year but, all of you will hear about it. We will see how things turn out
Just a note, their are quite a few spelling and grammar mistakes. As well as age displacement. Just thought I’d let you know.
Have a great day and week.
Regards,
Jacques van Heerden
Creativeoverflow
luke
07. Nov, 2009
Thanks for the list. I started my site hoping to get to the same position but its not all happening at the moment.
Got any ideas?
http://www.youngbusinessnetwork.com.au
Iv been telling people that im going to make millions be for im 23 years old. Iv been saying that since i was 17. I just turned 21. Im running out of time.
I WONT GIVE UP!
Thanks for the inspiration
Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com
07. Nov, 2009
Inspiring list. And they have one thing in common – be different to everybody else!
Andrew
khalid
08. Nov, 2009
great list, very inspiring and amazing too thatr how they got this much success in just twenties.
Please publish a list of famous sites like orkut, twitter etcetra.
Richard
08. Nov, 2009
Great to know this Young Entrepreneurs. What they have done fuels my passion to achieve the best I can be.
Richard
Azad Shaikh
09. Nov, 2009
Your list is really very much motivating. The way you represent those people, i really like it. One day i will be one of them.
To our success,
Azad Shaikh
Edward Palomo
09. Nov, 2009
Gee! this folks are really cool! they’re real inspirations for everybody especially the youth! like me! LOL
Lyndit
09. Nov, 2009
Really refreshing to have so many young entrepreneurs, normally the spotlights are around a bunch of old business suits behind a big desk, looking intimating. All of these business people are bringing a new perspective to the world of entrepreneurs – one that inspires young adults to be creative and not be held back because of their age. Thank you!
saurabh shah
10. Nov, 2009
wow ! this is an awesome post ! Man where the hell i am … i need to move up now …
Mr Meaningful
10. Nov, 2009
Something you notice about the majority of the websites/software that have made it big and we use daily were started by young entrepreneurs. It seems a young man’s game, however it definitely is not! I believe the older generations are just starting to understand the power of the internet, so maybe expect a lot of them soon shining through with their experience! Good post BTW.
Franco
11. Nov, 2009
Amazing!!!, It sures gives me hope
Heather
13. Nov, 2009
Wow. I knew there were a lot of young entrepreneurs around, but I’d forgotten just how successful some of them were~! A sign to get moving definitely.
Ways for Kids to Get Money
14. Nov, 2009
Wow. Multi millionaire by the age of 20. The internet is a really amazing and cool tool. I
Typhoon
16. Nov, 2009
You have listed some nice people out there. The pic related to Edmund Loh was really funny watching.
David Shaw
16. Nov, 2009
Impressive list!
I have got 3 years left to try and become a multi-millionaire before I am 25!
How hard can it be?
Mário Andrade
16. Nov, 2009
Can’t believe they are only 1 year younger than me…
ndagire
17. Nov, 2009
quite inspirational..guess @ 23 its not yet too late 4me.
Kaleem
17. Nov, 2009
OMG, I am 24…. have got one year to pull off miracles lol well, I am an entrepreneur and this list motivates me more than anything….
Yogi - CMSThemes.NET
23. Nov, 2009
I’m 27 and going 28 right now but hope someday I can be like them, have a very popular site
kudiarto21
24. Nov, 2009
awesome! ^_^
ramiro marques
28. Nov, 2009
One of the best posts I have ever read. Thank you.
SyriX
09. Dec, 2009
i’m 24 and i’ve seen lot’s of lists like this, it’s inspirational but at the same time it makes you feel like a loser..
Vicky
10. Dec, 2009
It is a amazing how intelligent and successful they are. They are a great inspiration to the kids today
Steven van Vessum
16. Dec, 2009
Very inspiring, 30 reasons to become an internet entrepreneur! 30 proves that it’s possible to become huge thorugh online!
Good stuff!
Ryan
19. Dec, 2009
Very comprehensive and well researched list.
Also quite inspirational since I’m also 23 like a lot of these cats.
Ryan @ Plantingdollars
Eron Napier
06. Jan, 2010
Talk about inspirational! Hopefully we will see some more ladies on this list in the future!
chand
18. Jan, 2010
Incredible……
Sai
19. Jan, 2010
Hi, great list… really inspirational..keep the good work Mic..
jk
19. Jan, 2010
Amazing…its really good to c you all people with their in creditable talents. seems its mirror of role models.
shakti
30. Mar, 2010
These guys are really amazing. I like Mark Zuckerberg a lot and using facebook more than others. keep it up Mark. Stunning post i really appreciate. Thanks for sharing…
Charles
13. Apr, 2010
Great list. 4 years I ago I started my first blog. I quit after about a week. I wish I stuck to it.
Michael
23. Apr, 2010
Wow. That should be an inspiration to all of us, regardless of age. I could not even imagine being a multi-millionaire at such a young age. Kudos to them!
Vickie Tisdale
03. May, 2010
To read this article I understand one thing that is age is not a fact the main thing is self confidence with industry.
Mohammed
13. May, 2010
Today only i came accross this site…its reallu awesome…really a great inspiration to me and all others here.
Brian
14. May, 2010
This list clearly shows that, if you want to make money with a limited amount of capital the internet is the way to go…look at facebook’s ceo Mark Zurkerberg he is a perfect example…big ups to all aspiring enterpreneurs…keep fighting.
Lucy Robinson
19. May, 2010
i am working hard to be a good Entrepreneur in online services. I also attend online seminars to sharpen may skills.`.,
Steven
29. May, 2010
I just literally stumbled on this and thought it was awesome. I’ve never seen pictures of some of these guys but I have heard their names. Interesting to see how young they are! That is so awesome, and a personal goal I have myself. Wish me luck!
abdul mues
26. Jun, 2010
wow thats great me too will be in this list soooooooooooooooon….
vonspurter
01. Jul, 2010
Distinct lack of women in this list – well there’s one!